Last Day of Trading for RRGR

Today is the last day of trading for RRGR the ETF that I have been subadvising in partnership with AdvisorShares. Quite simply we failed to raise sufficient assets to make the fund viable. We tried to do something and it did not work out. Successes and failures are a part of a full life.

I had a very fun time with all of it and really enjoyed working with the crew at AdvisorShares for the last couple of years as we first went through the process to bring the fund to the market and then the ongoing process of managing and supporting the fund. It would have been much better if the fund had succeeded of course but having fun and liking the people you work with is not the single worst outcome we could have had.

To say I am grateful for the opportunity that AdvisorShares gave us would be an understatement, it was a genuine show of faith in what I have been trying to do with the blog and what our firm has been trying to do for our clients.

Thank you again to AdvisorShares and thanks you people who’ve been reading the blog over the years who offered encouragement along the way.

17 Comments

Anonymous
on November 29, 2013 at 1:31 pm

Maybe you should take that ad for RRGR off of the right hand side of your blog.

Roger, I want to run my own fund one day. How much does it cost to launch an ETF and how much does it cost to keep it open (monthly or annually)? How does this compare to a mutual fund or hedge fund format?

Generically speaking if you are part of one of the existing platforms you benefit from economies of scale but planning for costs in the area of $10,000/month would make sense. It could be a little less.

The range in start up costs really varies.

There are a lot of moving parts in terms of legal work, filings, registration, constructing required documents, whatever marketing material you plan to use, making that material compliant.

It is really disappointing when you see that the best funds do not equal the most assets in this industry. There is so much garbage marketed aggressively, and so many great ideas that dont get the traction. I guess its true that “funds are sold, not bought”, which just stinks.

Owner of a few RRGR shares during a portion of its existence. Roger, timing can be everything, whether that is fair or not. Comparing RRGR to the S&P 500 ( I believe that was your benchmark, and it had an excellent 1 year 4 1/2 months during the period of RRGR’s existence), the unmanaged S&P 500 wins by quite a bit. Compared to more non-US centric funds such as EFA or VT, globally oriented RRGR wins. I understand that the S&P 500 is well known and followed by many, but did you ever consider using a more global benchmark? Thank you for providing the RRGR investment choice.

Monday there will be a new manager who might not share Roger’s vision and make big changes to the portfolio. Likely, the fund will be rolled into another fund that may have different investment objectives. Who knows? But you can be sure that the move is a business decision meant to benefit the managers first, the investors likely were not considered.

Now the that manager you hired via the original fund is gone, YOU have to find a new manager. You might also take a tax hit in a taxable account to move to a new manager or fund.

It would have been nice if the investors could have had a little more heads up, but I suppose there are rules against that. Let’s hope those who need to move somewhere don’t get whip sawed too badly or get hosed in a taxable event.

The reason we use the S&P 500 is that it is easy for clients to track and understand what is in the S&P 500 versus other benchmarks. This is a little less true now that ACWI trades as a fund but that was the idea.

Sorry to hear about the fund. The sad thing is for many of us this was probably our only chance of having you manage our investments as the min. balance at your firm is probably more than many of us have. I do appreciate all the work you have done on your blog. Your posts have been thought provoking and insightful and I am sure have improved the processes for many of us you are trying to manage our own funds.

It is ironic that you of all people who constantly emphasize that one can’t control returns (income) but you can control what you spend launched a great fund managed quite well which failed due to expenses which were ridiculously high. And then at the end raised them even more.

As I have pointed out before you also have to add to the expenses of RRGR the expenses with in the fund from the ETFs, etc which you used to figure out the total expenses of the fund. Thus you were doomed from the start due to the high net expenses.

I fail to see why you agreed to charge so much to substantially pick other money mangers to use.

I wish you would do this all over again but this time have reasonable costs.